


True Names

by ljs



Series: Investigations and Acquisitions [12]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: An Investigations and Acquisitions future-fic (written in 2007; set in 2014).While Giles and Anya are ill, their son David and adoptive son Tariq go adventuring in the Devon countryside, on a chilly autumn night on their way to visit Aunts Willow and Fred. But the world is stirring, and it takes true names to let the spirits rest.





	1. Chapter 1

"We _promise_ we’ll be good, really," David said, with an insufferable air of patience toward the ailing, aging parents.

"And not get into any trouble, cos we _know_ better," Tariq said. His angelic tone was slightly less offensive, but only just.

"And we’ll call when we get to Aunts Willow and Fred’s house," they finished together.

Giles sighed. His bloody laryngitis precluded any serious paternal reproof, and his boys were looking at him so hopefully, and that sharp November wind from the open door wasn’t doing him any favours either. But damn it, he had responsibilities. "No, I--"

" _I’ll_ drive you two. No discussion," Anya croaked from the kitchen doorway. Her statement would have had a deal more force if she hadn’t been clutching the wall to keep herself upright – his poor darling suffering worse than he from their shared epidemic cold, which they had just barely prevented from galloping into bronchitis and pneumonia. ( _If_ they had. Early days yet.)

Their eleven-year-old boys were the picture of rude health, of course, since they’d caught the colds first – a nice mild catching – before sharing with the adults a few days ago. Somewhat belatedly they’d all fled London for the quiet comfort of Swallow’s Nest, leaving Andrew and two Watcher-interns in charge of Investigations and Acquisitions. Giles still couldn’t think of the long, aching drive on the M4 and various A roads without shuddering in horror. Or maybe that was the bloody wind through the door. Christ, it was cold.

It was only a mile and a half between Swallow’s Nest and Yew Cottage, the path relatively well-travelled and going right through the village. Willow and Fred were so kind to offer to keep the boys tonight, really, and if there could be a way to get them there...

"Catcher," Anya managed. "No walking English lanes near dusk."

"Mum," David said, "the Catcher and his dog were vanquished _ages_ ago. And in summertime, whilst this is November. ‘Sides, I know all about repelling evil spirits now."

"Not ‘all,’ surely," Giles said as dryly as he could.

"Well, lots of spirits, then. I’ve been reading. Really, Dad."

"Right," Tariq said. "And anyway, Giles-Dad, you spoke to the coven yesterday when you still had your voice sort of and you know they said everything’s fine out on the moors and tors, and Aunt Willow said everything’s fine too, wasn’t even any supernatural damage ‘round Halloween–"

"--Amateur night, nothing indigenous or anything," David interpolated.

"–so we’ll just be taking a nice walk in the country. Cos everything’s fine."

David nodded emphatically. "We’ll just go on then."

Giles looked at Anya. She looked at him. Amazing how she could still look so beautifully fierce with puffy eyes and red nose. "You sit down by the fire in the lounge, Rupert, you’re worse than I am," she croaked. "I’ll take them."

"No, darling–"

But his almost soundless protest cut off when she took one wobbly step without benefit of wall-brace and almost fell.

David caught her and her fluttering handkerchief. "Mum, see, we don’t want you to hurt yourself. We’ll be fine."

Tariq took her other side. "Seriously, Anya-Mum. We’ll just settle you down on the sofa–"

"Bring in the tea," David added.

"And call you soon as we get to Aunts Willow and Fred. We’ll leave the mobile within reach."

This double-act had actually taken the three of them into the lounge. Giles trailed vaguely after, trying not to feel dizzy, trying to fish his car keys out of his pocket in an unobtrusive fashion.

Tariq dropped Anya on the sofa with cheerful boyish dispatch, then grinned at Giles. "Seriously, Giles-Dad, don’t even."

"Don’t tell him what to do, he gets cranky!" David hissed in a stage-whisper. Then, in a manner Giles found suspiciously respectful, "Come on, Dad. Don’t you trust us?"

"Perhaps this is the time," Giles managed to say, "to remind you of the incident in Green Park two months ago? The gremlins you’d unleashed swarming toward Buckingham Palace? And then your July adventure with the–"

"Oh, _Dad_ ," David said, then looked at his watch. "Gosh, it’s getting late. You don’t want us walking in the dark, do you?"

The wind was rising, swirling through the still open door, and the fire snapped viciously at the surround. Crack went the log, sending sparks upward. Something familiar about the sound and image, Giles couldn’t figure what.

And he couldn’t figure how he’d come to join Anya on the sofa, the tea tray and the mobile on the rebuilt ottoman in front of them. He’d lost time somehow...

"Coats!" Anya croaked from beside him, echo of near past, distant past. He remembered old terrors too clearly.

But now tall, competent David stood in the doorway, winding his scarf around his neck, with Tariq wrapped up just behind him. "Got it covered, Mum," they said, and Tariq waved a torch he must have unearthed from the kitchen catchall drawer. David finished, "We’ll leave the dogs with you to protect you."

Poor old Macallan and Cava stirred, tails thumping gently on the carpet in front of the fire, but showed no signs of wishing to join their charges in the cold. Giles knew how they felt.

Anya sagged against his shoulder, her hand finding his. "Oh, all right," she said weakly. "But call soon as you get there."

Sunbeam smiles from the boys – Tariq had caught the trick from Anya too, Giles thought – and then a swing of backpacks and a rush out the door, taking the wind and noise with them. All that was left was warmth, quiet, and his Anya making a valiant effort not to snuffle beside him.

"They’ll... fine," he almost-voiced. Christ, how frustrating.

But after all these years his wife could read him very well. "We’ll give ‘em ten, fifteen minutes, then call Willow, or possibly text her for clarity, and then follow if we’re not satisfied," she said. Then, on a thick exhalation of pain, she put her free arm around his waist and her leg over his thigh, and snuggled in. "Ow. Ick. I feel every stupid bit of eleven hundred years old right now."

"Darling," he said, and sank deeper into the sofa, with her body to blanket him in the way that always made him feel better.

Outside the wind still rose, higher and higher, and the fire leapt up like a sinuous living thing trying to get out.

..................................................................

Willow moved the candlesticks back from the edge of the table, in the likelihood of tweener boys galloping through the house at several points in the next fourteen hours, and then looked around Yew Cottage’s living room. Seemed safe enough – no magic potions left out, no books that David in particular shouldn’t see (what with his intense curiosity and adventurous nature, which she knew worried Anya and not-so-secretly pleased Giles), no sharp objects except that one athame....

"Don’t worry, Willow," Fred said from behind her, and then warm arms enfolded her. "The kids will be fine."

"I know. Mostly. I’m so happy they’re going to stay tonight, I just, just get a little twisted up in getting ready."

Fred laughed against her neck. "A little? Like a locus of all twistiness in this dimension, I’m thinking."

"Stop teasing." She slapped at Fred’s hand. "If you don’t, I’ll call Oz tomorrow to start our own kids."

Fred laughed harder. "Told you a hundred times that’d be great, and I’ll call Charles too, and boy, wouldn’t that be a fun weekend? Long as we’re doing it the old-fashioned way..."

" _Winifred_!"

" _Willow_!" Fred echoed in a Texas mocking thing which was cute but Willow was hardly going to admit that.

It was so nice to have a partner who got her, who mirrored back those wild impulses inside the good geeky girl she still sometimes was, but who shared the craving for quiet and safety too. Also, she could improvise and hack around almost as well as Willow when the need arose, and somehow it always did....which made them both back off from the idea of kids, really.

Besides, they got to share in the fun of David and Tariq without having to deal with too many of the actual parental headaches. Except times like now.

Outside the wind was rising, starting to howl around the eaves, and a hurled nut or two from their old chestnut tree rattled on the roof overhead. Willow looked at her watch – the boys should have talked Giles and Anya into letting them walk by now, David had told her to expect them around five – and then shivered at the noise in eaves and tree and on roof.

Fred looked up. "That’s not so great. Maybe we should have had the village arborists take a look at our tree too when they were chopping down Old Tertius–"

"No! Those people were awful!" Willow folded her arms. "That tree wasn’t sick enough yet, and it was a guardian tree for the village and everything. It can’t be a choice to destroy something just to control..." She trailed off at the thought of her crazy attempts at control in Sunnydale, her destructive urges written on her own eyes and body and on other people’s broken bones. Yes, they were past, but she still worried sometimes. She tried again: "Fred, sweetie, you know that’s why the coven’s called in that botanist-witch this weekend? Dr Maryam Baker, I’ve made you read her monograph....Anyway, just to make sure that no informing spirit was harmed, because those arborists were _butchers_. Really they were!"

"Sorry, hon. When you told me before, I missed why she was coming. The lab results that Betsy messed up that day, I was sort of preoccupied... Anyway, wouldn’t any informing spirit, any hamadryad or whatever, actually be killed when the tree was cut down?"

Willow touched the candlestick, caressing the beeswax pillar in a vague attempt to centre herself. It wasn’t that she hadn’t shared her last nightmares with Fred, although she hadn’t. It was more that she couldn’t explain her vision of leaves swirling up like wind-blown fire, couldn’t articulate the image of brown-tinged fingers reaching toward light, couldn’t understand why she’d woken the past two nights since the tree’s felling, the sound of a woman’s sobs filling their bedroom.

She’d walked to the edge of the village this morning in the grey November mist, and stood by the hole where Old Tertius had grown, and felt something, but her invocations and invitations went unanswered. When she’d turned to go home, she’d heard the sobs again, but no one had been there. Nothing but broken branches and crushed leaves and discarded nuts.

The boys would have to walk right by that spot on their way....

"Willow?" Fred touched her arm. "You didn’t answer my question."

Obeying a moment’s instinct, Willow laid her head on Fred’s shoulder and breathed in. It was comforting here, smelling Fred’s handmixed perfume and the lemon cake now baking in the oven, enjoying that nice fuzzy sweater she’d given Fred last winter solstice (despite being asked by Anya if that meant Fred was a muppet underneath, and if so, which one). But she could still hear those woman’s sobs in the rattle of chestnuts on the roof.

"I think," Willow said carefully, "I think we might be dealing with some kind of weird Devon anomaly."

"Would this anomaly be magical in origin?"

"Yes."

Fred patted her shoulder. "So I’m thinking we should walk to the village and meet the boys on the way?"

"Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too."

.......................................................

Wind was picking up, making the twilight hiss and shudder and do all kinds of things David usually liked. He and Tariq had run the first bit, riding gravity down the hill toward the village and getting all warm, but now they were halfway through, and --

"Maybe we should have stayed to take care of Mum and Dad," he said for the fifth time.

Tariq staggered, hands to his heart in his usual way of taking the piss. "Oi, the _pain_ of the Giles conscience, the _burden_ of it."

"Shut it, you git."

"No, mate. Really, it’s ‘strordinary, the trouble you make for yourself." Tariq grinned at him, then pushed his black hair out of his eyes. Wind was even stronger here in the heart, just by the old post office that Mum and Aunt Willow had saved from closure last year (something about scary Uncle Jools and calling in favours, Dad had been cross about it). "Don’t you think, tosser, that maybe it’s good for Giles-Dad and Anya-Mum to be able to do their cuddling–"

"Oh, please–"

"And sneezing and napping without you and me to worry about? And you know Anya-Mum, she can’t rest until we’re all taken care of."

David didn’t answer right away. They were crossing under Old Secundus, one of the three ancient sweet chestnut trees Aunt Willow and Gillian-at-the-coven talked about as village guardians. The guidebooks even mentioned them, and then David had read a little bit about tree-spirits, nymphs and stuff which were tied to their trees.

He’d asked Dad if it was weird that these maybe nymph-trees had sort of boyish names, Latin ones given years ago by a previous Giles and which had stuck all these generations. Dad had gone quiet, thinking about it, and then had said that real names, true names, were part of everyone’s inside, and it didn’t matter what outsiders called them. Sometimes only someone who lived there – someone like the tree-spirit herself – would be able to speak her own name.

What if we asked politely, just to learn, David said, and Dad said, Depends on the occasion and the need. ‘S complicated, Dad said.

David looked up now at Old Secundus’s branches against grey sky. Topmost ones had been stripped of leaves by the gale –looked like dark fingers or something, stories high. Not like the Catcher’s, but... not really comfortable either. He didn’t think he wanted to know the tree-spirit’s name right now.

"Careful," Tariq said, and just in time pulled David clear of a smallish falling branch. "Conscience bothering you so much, you’re just going to let yourself get all conked on your head?"

"No, no. Just wasn’t...paying attention. Thanks, Ric."

"No worries."

The two of them walked on a bit further, past the old church on one side on the lane, the pub further down on the other. Although the pub’s door was open and light was pouring out, nobody seemed to be around. The pub sign – which was cool, the Three Stooping Trees – creaked sort of dangerously in the wind.

David looked again at Tariq, who was scuffing his trainers through a dry pile of leaves. Ric looked a bit unhappy, like. He got that way sometimes when people talked about family. First time they’d come into the village for stamps and sweets, old Mrs Dannon had asked nastily who Tariq belonged to. Dad had stopped Mum from saying something nasty back – only Dad _could_ stop Mum like that – and then said gently that while it was too complicated to explain, he’d appreciate it if Tariq was recognised as just another Giles.

Sometimes Tariq forgot that true thing, David knew. So he shoved him companionably and said, "Oi yourself, tosser. Are you fighting the weight of a Giles conscience now?"

"Not me, mate," Tariq said then, and grinned again. "I believe in Anya-Mum’s conscience instead..."

"‘Just understand what you did wrong, do better, and don’t _brood_ about it, that doesn’t do anybody any good!’" they chorused, laughing, and they kept on walking, despite a rattle of branches on the lane behind them, despite the cold and falling dark.

Aunts Willow and Fred lived only two twists of the road past the village, but there was one more twist here before the real country began. This was where Old Tertius, the most gnarled and bent of the three guardian-trees, had used to be, but the county tree people had come by and felled it. Rotten at the heart, they said, something about a hollow, diseased core. Aunt Willow had tried to argue, Mum said, but they’d cut it down anyway. David had heard the chainsaws, faintly, all the way up the hill at Swallow’s Nest.

Really dark here, darker than dark, although it shouldn’t be. "What do you reckon, Tariq? The torch?"

"Just what I was thinking," Tariq said, and pulled his backpack ‘round to the front and began to search. This could take a while, Ric wasn’t known for his tidiness.

Also, it was too dark to see, really. And too cold. And suddenly, louder than the wind, louder than the hissing of leaves and clicking of branches once against the other, came the sound of some lady crying.

"What the bloody hell?" Tariq said.

David said, "Come on," and he took the torch out of Tariq’s hand, turned it on, aimed it toward where the sobbing came from.

The hole where Old Tertius had been was dark in the midst of darkness. And in front of it – ripped leaves, and fallen nuts, and broken branches, all swirling together, round and round, up and up, and the branches reached up toward the lowering clouds, like fingers catching up wool.

Words David didn’t know poured out of the swirling shape, harsher than the sobs, and the finger-branches reached out. It looked like a woman, gnarled and twisted, hollow at its heart.

And then the leaves-and-branches shape growled, and from its feet, caught by the wind, a huge branch came sailing for the boys’ heads.

...............................................................


	2. Chapter 2

Giles, as usual, was struggling to catch up to his Anya. "What?" he managed to voice, as he pushed himself to standing. "Slowly, darling."

But despite her evident weakness, she was already up and to the coat rack by the door. "No answer, either on the mobile and the landline at Yew Cottage!" she said, then went into a fit of coughing. Still sharp, even when gasping for breath: "There are no good reasons for lack of connection, it’s all bad or worse, so I’m going to go make sure our boys are safe." She stumbled for a moment, then righted herself and sent him a wifely look. "You stay here, honey. Rest."

"No." It was all he said. Took all his energy to move toward the door – already open, wind already howling through, cold and with a new, dark beat underneath. What the bloody hell was that noise?

"Rupert, don’t make me worry about you too." Her voice was all the fiercer for her hoarseness. Her tendency toward (insanely) conscientious care had mushroomed into a giant fungal mass of overprotectiveness a year or so ago, and she coddle-stroke-harassed him in the most bloody ridiculous ways. "You’re _sick_ , I need you to stay warm and not be attacked by further viruses or chills–"

"No." And that was that.

Muttering horrific insults about his judgement and inability to see reason, she held onto him as he pulled his coat off the rack and struggled into it. Then, before he could even get his second arm through, she said, "Wait," and she made her slightly unsteady way back to the fire.

Right. Fire-guard. Which thought touched its own spark – "Wish-candles," he said without sound. They could be useful, should anything be awry with the boys... He and Anya were overreacting, of course, he knew they were both stupidly quick to worry about David and Tariq, but just in case.

Then he looked at the candles, and his hands became fists.

The four flames, one for every family member here at Swallow’s Nest, rose despite the wind, twisting like sharp clean blue fingers. He’d never seen them burn like that. He suddenly was dead sure he and Anya weren’t overreacting at all.

He blew out two of the candles, then plucked them from their holders. Anya was back by then, already digging in his pocket. "Good thought, honey. But I need your keys, I don’t have time to look for mine." He hated when she drove him, but he forbore mentioning this. She knew it, anyway, and he was well aware that this one time she was right to insist.

When they went out into the cold – Macallan and Cava silent but hovering at their heels – the wind struck at them, and the old yews along the edges of their lane seemed to shrink together, darker now in the falling dark. It shouldn’t be this dark this soon.

He looked away, down toward the village, and saw nothing but treetop waves, branches like fingers digging into cloud.

"Hurry, darling," he tried to say, but the wind took what was left of his voice and shredded it. So cold, so aching.

Anya opened the rear door of their Saab and, not waiting for old muscles and bones to gather themselves, she pushed Macallan into the backseat. Cava still could manage, just...

Giles opened the driver-side door for Anya – no use in fighting that battle – then got in on his side. When he shut the door, the wind seemed to rise, loud against the hush and the harsh breathing safe inside.

She turned on the headlamps. Yew trees seemed to huddle together, branches intertwined with branches, warding off the light. But then Anya punched the car into reverse, and the image was lost. He grasped the wish-pillars and braced his feet against the rush.

As the Saab plunged into the narrow road and down toward the village, however, he felt dizzy again, felt the loss of time. He remembered his own childhood here, running down the hill to the village, singing the names of some of the plants as he ran. _Taxus baccata_ , English yew, he had sung to himself as he passed the vicarage and their protective, neatly clipped border. _Castanea sativa_ , sweet chestnut, he’d sung three times, one each for Primus, Secundus, Tertius.

At some point in his maturation he’d lost the tune if not the Latin, and he’d never learnt the true names of the guardian trees. He’d never been able to talk to plants to divine their secrets, not like Anya could. No, he was the plant-killer in the family. They didn’t know about David or Tariq’s botanical aptitudes yet....

They turned the corner into the village, and Anya lifted her foot off the gas pedal. "Do you see them?" she croaked, leaning over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield. The dogs began to growl.

Giles bent closer to the windshield, too. "No, I.... Christ, what’s that?"

Under the branches of Old Primus stood a shadow. No, more than shadow – it was broken branches and fallen leaves tied together with dark, a human but misshapen form with sharp-tipped twigs for hands. Darkness moved, and the wind sobbed --

And some branch flung from nowhere struck the glass barrier hard.

In Giles’ hands the wish-candles leapt into life.

" _Rupert,_ " Anya said urgently. "Not yet!"

.....................................................

"No!" Willow shouted. She held out her bare hands to the tree-spirit, imploring it to turn from David and Tariq, now murmuring sounds without words. Beside her, Fred was poised on her toes, ready to run, ready to protect the boys.

They’d fought their way down and around from Yew Cottage – the wind not letting them walk easily, the hedges hissing in the frost-heavy gusts. But it hadn’t just been the wind, Willow thought now, numb. She could hear the crying now, hear it from everywhere.

What had she learned all those years ago, that first summer in Devon? Everything’s connected, she’d said. Giles had known the Latin name of the Paraguayan flower, but it had been she who’d called it from where it lived.

Whatever was left of Old Tertius had called to hedge and tree, root and branch, leaf and fruit, and all around them the woods were waking. But Willow could hear, faintly, the cold dark note in the call. The horrible arborists had been at least partially right: the tree _had_ been infected by something. Its spirit’s voice was poison.

"Aunt Willow, what do we do?" David shouted.

He and Tariq stood on the village road, their makeshift weapons of torch and backpack at the ready. The fear that had crashed over her when she and Fred had turned the corner, when she’d seen the broken hamadryad hurling its leftover branch at them – but David had used the old, heavy flashlight like a cricket bat. One good hit, and the branch crashed to the ground. A second branch had been Tariq’s at-bat, and he’d sent it away just as handily.

But now Willow could hear the renewed anger in Old Tertius’ voice. No, no, Tertius wasn’t its _true_ name. She’d learned all those years ago she needed to name rightly before a spirit would answer.

She closed her eyes on years of listening, on years of control. For some stupid reason she got a flash of herself in high school, colour-coding everything, sitting cross-legged on her bed in a sea of papers which rustled when she moved. She’d thought she knew stuff then. She’d been so clueless about how much she hadn’t known.

"Just hang on, you guys," Fred said, loud enough to carry over the wind and the awakened world. "We’re working on it!"

Blind, Willow stepped closer to her partner. Fred was warmth and perfume and lemon cake, her anchor in this cold twilight. Thank you, honey, she thought to her nearest and dearest, and then sent her thoughts coursing out with her lifted fingers. _O hurt and wounded spirit, who are you?_

_Who?_ came from the shadow-shape made of dark and branch and leaf and fallen tree-fruit, and its echo came from Mrs Dannon’s oak tree in the near garden, from the holy yews that lined the churchyard, and, distant but growing weirdly closer, from the other guardian chestnuts. _Who are YOU, and why are you asking me?_

_I am Willow,_ she said without voice.

The wind screamed, and all the trees creaked as if they’d move. "Hang on," Fred whispered, just barely audible. Willow didn’t know if that was for her or for the boys. Didn’t matter.

_I am Willow_ , she sent out again.

_No, no. Willow lives by the river, not by the hill. That is not your real name. ___

Eyes still closed, Willow lifted her hands higher into the dark and the wind and the cold, and she let herself feel the currents. She let herself... loosen, like willow-branches shivering in a river-borne breeze, like thin fallen branches caught in a slow current. _This is my name, and this is who I am. Now, anyway._

_I say it is NOT_ , came the answer, and the wind screamed again, and the near trees groaned. But the far trees didn’t join in. Old Primus and Secundus, silent... Willow couldn’t hear what they were thinking. But the shadow said, _Why do you lie? Why have I been taken, why I alone?_

There was anger now, deeper than the severed roots of that which had been Tertius: it was colder still, as if the hamadryad had pulled ice from the clouds. Even as Willow formed this thought, she heard a long, slow hiss, and then the crack of a dozen dozen branches, the slap of wood against wood. 

"No!" she cried aloud, opening her eyes.

In the shadow’s dark arms were two bundles of those cracked branches. Even as Willow thrust out her hands – to call? to reject? she didn’t know – the tree-spirit spun, unanchored now by its roots, and let loose its weapons. 

Bits of wood flew like bullets on the wind.

"Down!" Fred pulled Willow to the ground as she spoke.

The mass of broken branches went over their heads, just a couple of splinters dropping onto them and cutting at exposed skin, and then with a clatter, all fell.

_No, no, no_ , came the dark cry.

Willow looked up. The shadow-shape was almost upon them, but there – just there, behind the hamadryad – two small rushing figures, one with torch, one with backpack. She couldn’t see their faces, though, because behind them were lights, so many lights, and the slams of car doors and the howls of beloved dogs.

But then she looked again, squinting against the light. Two larger shadows rose high against the clouds, with oddly shaped fingers digging into the grey wool sky.

_Everything’s connected._  
<


	3. Chapter 3

The scary tree-spirit – no, _hamadryad_ , cos real names were important-- was moving toward Aunts Willow and Fred, reaching out sharp branchy fingers. David didn’t have any idea how to talk to the thing, he hadn’t read enough, he’d messed up.

"How do we save them, Ric?" he whispered.

"Hit the bloody thing, maybe," Tariq said, and he swung his backpack in front of him like a bat.

Yeah, it’d been kind of brilliant to hit the stuff the hamadryad had thrown at them the first time. David could still feel the thrum of connection in his hands, feel the shock when wood struck wood. Sometimes a bloke just had to hit–

"Go," he said at the same time as Tariq, and they leapt toward the shadow-shape.

But before they got more than a step or two closer to the dark, there was light from behind them – made their own shadows reach out like a hamadryad’s fingers, dark touching dark – and the slam of car doors, and then Mum’s sore-throat shout, "David, Tariq!"

David looked back to tell her that _they_ weren’t in trouble any more, it was the aunts, but then he saw.

Mum and Dad were striding toward them, carrying lit candles even in the cold wind so Dad must have spellcast even though he couldn’t talk really, with Macallan and Cava at their heels. Right beside them, though, were two people David didn’t recognise – a tall, round, brown woman with her head covered by a scarf, and a pretty girl his and Ric’s age, whose long black hair ribboned behind her. That was strange, but then, just passing the two cars–

Huge, human-shaped but not really, long torsos and legs and twiggy arms, and on top, cascading branches and nuts over warm dark. He remembered when he and Tariq had looked into a hole in the trunk of an old oak on the coven grounds and seen living, breathing centuries of tree. _That_ dark was good.

That must be what healthy hamadryads looked like. Old Primus and Secundus, _Castanea sativa_ , and when he thought of the Latin, for some weird reason he wanted to sing.

But then Dad’s hand was on his shoulder, and Mum had hold of Tariq, and the dogs were all wrapped around everybody’s ankles, and he just felt safe.

The scarf-woman stopped and threw out her hands, closed her eyes, and began to chant, like Aunt Willow had been before Old Tertius turned on her...

He looked back. Aunt Willow and Aunt Fred were on their feet now, holding hands – but he could hardly see them through the shadows and leaves and branchy bits that was the bad hamadryad, shivering toward them.

The scarf-woman chanted louder, and the girl beside her was murmuring a counterpoint, high and low. Somewhere on the other side Aunt Willow joined her voice to theirs – chanting, not singing. Somebody needed to add the music.

So David began to sing without words, and Dad’s hand on his shoulder tightened. "Good," Dad said huskily, and "Good!" Mum said, and she and Tariq joined in singing too.

Old Tertius whirled ‘round in a shower of chestnuts, ping ping ping, and the wind rose. Sounded like a lady crying, like they’d heard at first.

Then the good hamadryads rushed by, and all around them rustled hedge and tree and everything, _everything_ good and growing, lifted up on chant and song.

The scarf-woman stopped chanting long enough to say over her shoulder, "Touch fire to the place where it lived to release it."

So while the good dark swallowed up the bad dark, branches on branches on branches, David and Tariq and Dad and Mum walked over to the hole where Old Tertius had grown all those centuries. It was hard to see, but the arborists had ground down the stump almost to the earth. Although David had a silent moment of terror – what would happen when the wish-candle flame met the wood? – when Dad and Mum bent down with the candles, he and Tariq held on. In fact, he leaned on Dad’s back so he could see and hear better –

"Thank you for your life, guardian," Dad said as loud as he could (which wasn’t very loud), and Mum said, "Thank you for your work, guardian." Which was kind of a Mum-like way of saying it, but David knew what she meant.

All around them rustled hedge and tree and everything, and the wind blew, and in the heart of dark came the sound of a woman’s sobs falling to nothing.

Dad and Mum put fire to wood. Around the remnants of Old Tertius’ trunk the fire ran once in perfect circle, smoothing out what had been crooked, illuminating the hole at the centre which burnt bright and then faded.

The chanting stopped. The wind stopped. The world was silent.

The fire went out, and for a moment all was cold.

Then the wind came back – or maybe that was just Old Primus and Secundus, the two good tree-spirits rushing back to their homes on a wave of twiggy arms and cascading branches and the odd fallen chestnut or two. One nut got David on the shoulder, which stung a bit, but it made him think.

He looked at Tariq (who was leaning on Mum just like David was leaning on Dad), and he said, "Mate, what d’you reckon? _Ents_?"

"Yeah!" Tariq said, grinning. "You think the bad one was a Huorn or something?"

"Yeah!"

And together they said, " _Bizarre_ ," in complete, happy agreement.

But then Mum coughed in a sort of theatrical way, and Dad said in a voice which almost didn’t have sound but still managed to be sort of Dad-dry, "While I’m pleased my months of reading Tolkien to you boys weren’t wasted, David, I can’t quite get up when you’re sitting on my back."

"Sorry, Dad," David said sincerely, and he helped his poor sick dad up off the ground as Tariq helped Mum.

By that time the aunts had walked over – cos there wasn’t anything separating anybody, now that the scary-bad hamadryad had been released – and were talking to the two new people. The girl really was pretty, all warm and glowy, David noticed. And then Aunt Willow waved them over to meet them.

"Dr Maryam Baker," Aunt Willow said, "this is Giles... um, sorry, _Rupert Giles_ , it’s a thing, and his wife Anya, and David and Tariq. Gileses, this is Dr Maryam Baker!" Which apparently Aunt Willow thought was enough.

Aunt Fred gave more information, cos she kept track of details, it was one of her jobs. "Dr Baker’s staying with the coven. Seems they’d mentioned we had tree trouble."

"Gillian Harkness is an old friend," Dr Baker confirmed. "And I, well, I’m a crypto-botanist. Just left Kew Gardens, in fact."

"Which means Mum’s a witch," the girl said. She had a really cool voice. "I’m going to be one too. _And_ learn about money."

Dr Baker pulled the girl in closer and smiled down at her. "Sorry, I should have introduced you. This is my daughter Leila, who apparently is going to be a witch. First time you’ve mentioned it, lovey."

"Oh, _Mum_ ," Leila said. "Um, hullo, everybody. My friends call me Lee ... sometimes."

She smiled at David. She really, truly did, which made him feel a little strange. Girls were all right, he’d always thought, but this one was.... He’d need to read more to get the words to describe it, but he knew he felt warm despite the nasty cold wind.

Dad squeezed David’s shoulder and then Tariq’s comfortingly, and Mum ruffled Tariq’s hair and then David’s (which was so _irritating_ , didn’t she know they were grown?), then the parents sort of croaked out their normal "Be good for Willow and Fred, love you, call you later, see you in the morning" goodbyes and headed off with Dr Baker toward the cars. Mum apparently had a lot to ask Dr Baker about plants, she was talking fast even with the coughing. Macallan and Cava went too, after one more circle of the boys’ ankles.

Aunts Willow and Fred had drifted over to what was left of Old Tertius – "Must be going to say a blessing," David said aloud.

"So you know about blessings?" Leila said to him.

He’d read at least two books just this month on spells of good faith, but... "Er. Yes. Um, sort of."

Tariq looked at him in a pitying way, for which he’d have to be punched later, then said to Leila, "Don’t mind him. Sudden brain damage. Classic, really."

"Ric, you bloody..." Could a bloke call his brother a tosser in front of a pretty girl? It might be rude. To the girl, not the tosser.

Before he could figure out the answer to this question, though, Aunt Fred stood up and said very loudly, "Oh my God, the lemon cake!" She looked at her watch, eeped, and then bolted off toward Yew Cottage.

Tariq said, "Right, nice to meet you, Lee, hope to see you again," then bellowed, "Wait, Aunt Fred! I’ll help!" and took off after her. He had an especial fondness for lemon cake (unburnt).

Which left David and Leila standing alone, sort of awkwardly. She said, "Um, so is that your brother? Tariq, right? And those your aunts, and your parents?" She bit at her lip. "I mean, you don’t exactly _look_ alike, though you look like your parents, well... so that’s your real family?"

David thought about the question, as he often did. About his wicked awesome dad, who was older than everybody except terrifying Uncle Jools and Aunt Elinor, and his mum about whom David hadn’t quite figured out something important, there was still a secret there, but who he loved so much. About Tariq, who might have other ‘real’ parents but was a Giles anyway.

Then he thought about all of his aunts, like Willow and Fred, and Aunt Dawn whom David secretly loved best of all the aunts and uncles, and Aunt Buffy the Slayer-queen (although he wasn’t supposed to call her that, it made her mad), and even Aunt Zoe who lived with Uncle Danny who’d been hurt on an op but was really brilliant still. About all of his uncles, especially hilarious Uncle Andy and now Ian who was like an uncle too, again, and Uncle Xander in Cleveland who was very funny and piratical, and crazy Uncle Wes (Mum said he was crazy, anyway) who’d run away with Aunt Faith, and the uncle-equivalents who nobody in his right mind would _call_ uncles, like Spike who was a good vampire and lived with Aunt Buffy, and Tom Quinn who held hands with Aunt Dawn when he thought no one was looking but everyone knew, cos he was a _terrible_ spy and a little crazy as well. But they weren’t technically his aunts and uncles, even if they were his real ones.

"‘s complicated," he said at last. "But they’re my true family. Yes."

"Leila!" Dr Baker called from their car – Mum and Dad’s taillights were already disappearing ‘round the corner, going back up to Swallow’s Nest.

"Coming, Mum!" Leila said, but then she paused. "We used to live in Richmond cos of Mum’s work, but we’re moving to Islington–"

"That’s where _we_ live!" David said, before flushing at his interruption.

"Cool," Leila said. "Anyway, we’ll be at the coven this whole weekend, so maybe I’ll see you later, right?"

"Right. Yes," David said. "Um, bye. Nicetomeetyou."

"Nice to meet you too," she said, and she was laughing at him but in a pretty way he didn’t much mind. "Bye, David!"

He stood there watching her as she ran back to her mum’s car, watching her hair ribbon behind her on the wind.

Then he blinked. It surprised him somehow that he was still holding the torch. He waved it at her as the car pulled away, then flashed the light on and pointed it at Aunt Willow, who still knelt by the ruin of Old Tertius.

She wiped tears off her face before smiling at him. "Ready to go?"

"Aunt Willow..." he said, helpless again. She felt things differently than everyone else, he worried about her sometimes.

But she got up and hugged him, and it was fine. "Shall we go up and have some cake, David?" she said, smiling still.

"Right, yes," he said. After he shifted his backpack to a more secure position: "And, er, Aunt Willow, tonight maybe we could read up about sweet chestnuts in one of your books? And maybe look up their magical properties as well? Cos you were brilliant with Old Tertius, and I want to learn more about all of that, the science _and_ the magic. And their true names."

"Absolutely." She hugged him again, said "You _are_ your father’s son, not-so-little Giles," then took his hand and started to run.

The wind blew cold, and the hedges and trees still rustled, but his torch lit the path, and the two of them could run fast whatever they carried.

...............................................

The wind outside was bloody howling, and the fire in the old fireplace danced, reaching up to touch the surround with blue-tipped fingers.

Giles, tucked up on the sofa, watched the fire dreamily. Through most of his adult life he’d never been one for sitting, for letting himself be instead of reading and thinking and acting, but since his marriage to Anya he’d learnt the skill. David, too, had taught him the value of watching the fire, had re-taught him the value of stories – and David and Tariq would be safe tonight, after all the fear.

He closed his eyes on the sudden stab of image – their boys in front of that spinning, vicious hamadryad, Willow and Fred on the other side – and made himself breathe. It was fine. Everything was fine. In fact....

"Ents and Huorns, for fuck’s sake," he said to himself, almost without sound, and began to laugh even though his throat hurt.

"Oh, Rupert, honestly," Anya croaked, appearing at his side with two steaming mugs and Macallan and Cava. "Can’t leave you alone for a minute without you losing your mind."

"My darling," he said, reached up to kiss her, then took one of the mugs. Mmm, yes – his wife knew how he liked his whiskey-and-lemon, with honey and just the right amount of hot water. Almost worth having a cold in order to drink this.

"Budge over," she said, and with the ease of long practice he opened his blanket to let her in, helped her settle herself around him, and wrapped them back up – all without spilling a drop from either mug.

Well, he and Anya knew what was important, didn’t they.

"Love you," he said into her hair, just loud enough to hear over the wind and the fire.

"Love you more, you cranky old man. Now drink your drink and rest your voice."

"Don’t tell me what to do, darling," he said, and then he laughed again, despite his sore throat, and sent his hand travelling down her spine.

Yes, he truly knew what was important.


End file.
